


when the sea rises to meet us (lover, be good to me)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: if this love is pain (then darling let's love tonight) [6]
Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Borderline Personality Disorder, Canon Compliant, Friendship, M/M, Metaphors, Missing Scene, POV Nico, a few of them, alright i still love the italian boysquad, and Nico really loves Marti, and the boysquad loves nico, but main focus is what happened in season 2 of Italy, but y'all knew that, hi i love niccolo fares and you can pry him from my cold dead hands, references to the Evak squad in Antwerp at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-18 06:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21590128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: For years Nico has felt adrift in the middle of a sea. He has a raft that sometimes is a full boat, holding everything he needs to survive, and that is sometimes nothing, leaving him to drown until the end of an episode.Sometimes, he nearly suffocates from lack of air before getting pulled out. Sometimes things get so bad that he feels like he is the only man in the ocean and that the only thing that could possibly fix things would be to succumb to the water.By and large, his life is a balancing act, trying not to fall in.And then comes Marti- Marti with his smile and that teasing lilt to his voice and his curiosity and his dry wit and his auburn curls- and Nico has a rope. A red rope- or string, rather- of fate, linking him to Marti. Linking him to dry land.He’s not alone, when he’s with Marti. He’s not suffering in silence, the last man in the sea. When he kisses Marti, when he’s literally drowning underwater with him, Nico doesn’t feel adrift. He feels like he’s found dry land, somehow, even as the water physically surrounds him.Marti has a rope. Marti is not the ocean- he is keeping Nico afloat in a way that no one else has.(Nico, learning how not to drown.)
Relationships: Giovanni Garau & Martino Rametta & Luca Colosi & Elia Santini & Niccoló Fares, Niccolò Fares/Martino Rametta
Series: if this love is pain (then darling let's love tonight) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550230
Comments: 8
Kudos: 89
Collections: Skam Italia ▶ Niccolo Vares / Martino Rametta





	when the sea rises to meet us (lover, be good to me)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Be" by Hozier.
> 
> (Y'all have no fucking idea how much I wanted to title this "the boy who couldn't hold his breath underwater," but I felt that reference belongs to whatever Evak fic I may someday right.)
> 
> Also I'd like to remind everyone that the Italian boy squad is my fucking favorite and that the moment that Marti wakes up and finds the red strings (plus the music in that scene *chef's kiss*) and also the Bracciano weekend are three of my fucking favorite things in any of the versions. Also, I fucking love Nico and sometimes I see some negativity towards him on tumblr and we are not going to abide that in my house, no sirree.

_Oh, I always let you down_

_You're shattered on the ground_

_But still I find you there_

_Next to me_

_And oh, stupid things I do_

_I'm far from good, it's true_

_But still I find you_

_Next to me_

**_-Imagine Dragons,_ Next to Me**

For years Nico has felt adrift in the middle of a sea. He has a raft that sometimes is a full boat, holding everything he needs to survive, and that is sometimes nothing, leaving him to drown until the end of an episode.

Sometimes, he nearly suffocates from lack of air before getting pulled out, whether by his parents or his meds or even, occasionally, Maddalena. Sometimes things get so bad that he feels like he is the only man in the ocean and that the only thing that could possibly fix things would be to succumb to the water.

By and large, his life is a balancing act, trying not to fall into that water.

And then comes Marti- Marti with his smile and that teasing lilt to his voice and his curiosity and his dry wit and his auburn curls- and Nico has a rope. A red rope- or string, rather- of fate, linking him to Marti. Linking him to dry land.

He’s not alone, when he’s with Marti. He’s not suffering in silence, the last man in the sea. When he kisses Marti, when he’s literally drowning underwater with him, Nico doesn’t feel adrift. He feels like he’s found dry land, somehow, even as the water physically surrounds him.

Marti has a rope. Marti is not the ocean- he is keeping Nico afloat in a way that no one else has.

-

And then Marti hacks nearly through that rope when he says that there’s no way to fix mentally ill people, that all you can do is avoid having to spend time with them, and Nico knows he needs to take a step back. He has to take a break.

So Nico texts Marti and he kisses Maddalena, because she may not be his rope, may not be his reason for survival, but she’s occasionally been the one pulling him from the water. He’s not together with her, not anymore, but she _is_ comforting, in some sort of way. She may have second-guessed every single one of Nico's desires, calling everything she perceived as abnormal a result of his illness, but she stuck by him for all these years. Her rope is thin, and tattered, but it's _there_. It's been there for years.

He sees Marti in the hallway, and Marti’s tone is cold, and Nico knows, deep in his bones, that he's fucked things up. And he has no idea how to _un_ fuck it, how to somehow make things right.

-

Then the text comes from Marti. That ominous text where Marti tells him that he doesn’t want to see Nico anymore if he doesn’t break up with Maddalena, and Nico doesn’t know if he has a chance but he’s so fucking willing to take a leap, to dive in and see if there’s any fucking way to recover the rope that he used to have, the rope that attached itself to Marti’s smile underwater in a swimming pool.

(Maybe things will go his way. Maybe Marti's rope won't break when he finds out about Nico. Maybe, maybe, maybe- the maybes gleam like a rope of their own, spun of spider silk that Nico shouldn't trust but can't resist swimming to.)

He gets to Bracciano after the longest, tensest six hours of his life, locked in a car with only his despairing thoughts to comfort him, and there’s Marti, in a hoodie, looking just as beautiful as ever. Marti kisses him as Nico’s never been kissed before and Nico kisses him back, trying to convey something of the emotions he’s feeling.

As he kisses his way down Marti’s face to his neck and chest, trying to show Marti just how much he loves him, he finds that string again. Their rope may be tattered but it’s still fucking _there,_ and the _maybe_ s become _probably_ s, become actual, solid possibilities because here is the boy he loves, in front of him, kissing him back.

Eventually they fall asleep, together, tangled in each others’ arms, having finally made love, and Nico may have only known Marti for a couple of months but he has never felt more at home than he does in Marti's arms.

-

When they wake up, Nico can’t help but stare. Marti’s the most beautiful person in the world, with that red halo of curls that echoes that red string of fate, and even as he’s frustrated over falling asleep Nico couldn’t be more in love with him.

And then they sing, and they’re kissing again, and Nico could stay in this moment forever, sitting on this boat with Marti, the ocean nothing but a distant memory.

-

Going out for breakfast with Marti’s friends the next morning is a bit nervewracking, Nico’s got to admit.

Gio, Luca, and Elia, Mart’s best friends- he doesn’t expect them to accept him as easily as they do. He doesn’t expect them to accept him, this pure stranger who’s in love with their best friend, who showed up in the middle of their weekend and then stole the bed.

But they do. Against all expectations, they _do_. During breakfast, they smile and laugh and joke with Nico as if he’s no stranger, not seeing his hand in Marti’s as anything wrong, and somehow they manage to help calm the ocean in his head even further than Marti already does.

And then when they get back from breakfast, Nico expects…well, he doesn’t know what to expect, honestly. Whether the boys will just want to ditch him or if he’ll just get stuck in the corner or if things will just get so awkward that they’ll just want them to leave. And he gets all of those endings, he really does, and he’s in no way offended by them- he _did_ just crash their weekend together, after all.

What Nico gets, though, couldn’t have been found in his wildest expectations. The boys invite him to play FIFA with them, and when he says he’s never played before, there are a bunch of shocked protests and then all three of them insist that they get to be the first to teach him the specifics, all while Marti sits back, hand in Nico’s, and smiles, that amused glint in his eyes that Nico love so much.

So Nico ends up spending the next couple of hours before they all leave playing FIFA, leaning into Marti’s arms, being utterly happy with getting laughed at and corrected because every so often he’ll get to hear Marti’s chuckle in his ear and a kiss against his temple or his cheek and Nico can't even feel a drop of the ocean against his skin because he's just so fucking happy.

-

Then, after all of that, he drives them all home, Marti in the backseat, the other three boys squished into the back, and it’s genuinely fun, and not just because of Marti’s hand next to his on the center console. No, it’s fun because Marti’s friends are fun, continuing up a steady string of jokes and references that he doesn't get but that still entertain him. They spend a good twenty minutes on a story about Luca and Greece and a suitcase that nearly leaves Nico in stitches by the end.

So these boys- they're...good. Just _good_ , in a way that Nico has never known a group of people to be before. They're silly and they're occasionally stupid but they love and care about Marti so much, and they opened up their weekend to Nico without being asked, and Nico had no idea that friends like this could exist.

(Nico’s never felt like this before. Felt this in love, before. Felt this _safe_ , before.)

Nico’s not so alone, not anymore, and it feels so new in the best possible way.

-

And then Nico fucks it up again, because he’s never been capable of anything more than that. All of his efforts, all of those smiles, all of those moments with Marti’s friends- they’re gone.

Because he fucks it up, in Milan, and Marti leaves him, and the worst part of it all is that Nico knew that this was going to happen. He knew, from the moment in the bathroom, that this was an inevitability, that one day his rope would be cut by the boy who put it there. He knew that his mental illness would be nothing but a burden on the people he loves, and that the boy with the rope no longer loves him.

For a week, Nico drifts and falls into the water and he knows that he’s drowning. He knows that he's reaching up and there's no boy to kiss him, no one to make the waters recede, because his ocean is too much. His ocean is too deep.

He is reaching upward, and the light is fading, and he hurt the one person who could have dropped him a rope.

-

And then, on that balcony, when he sends Marti that text-

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. He never has. Not in the pool, when he challenged Marti to hold his breath, not in Bracciano, with Marti or his friends, not in Milan, when he felt the episode coming in and choking him.

(He knows what he _wants_ , but what Nico wants, when it comes to relationships, is rarely what he gets.)

All he knows is that he’s alone, trapped in the melancholy of the tail end of an episode, and then all of a sudden he’s not, because Marti, against all odds, is there with him, standing in front of him, holding him.

What his brain catches on, in the middle stages of this episode: Marti’s hands, holding his face like it’s worth more than anything Nico’s parents could ever buy. Marti’s voice, reassuring him that he is not alone. Marti’s lips, against his, softly reassuring him that he is loved.

Nico is not the only man in the ocean. He isn’t the last man alive.

No, holding his face like he loves him, is another boy. A boy who loves him. A boy who won’t leave Nico, no matter how much his mind fucks up.

Marti is on that raft with Nico, holding the rope, holding every rope, and he won’t let Nico fall. He won’t let him drown.

-

When he sees the boys the first time after his and Marti's night on the balcony, Nico thinks that they'll hate him, now. Of course they will- he left Marti all alone in Milan. He hurt him in a way that Marti, thankfully, forgave, but that his friends are probably resentful of Nico for.

But- oh god, _but_.

Nico should really stop expecting the worst. He really should. Because when he sees the boys for the first time, at the cafe with the football game, he gets hugs from Luca and Elia and Gio, who pat him on the back and immediately invite him to join them playing a game.

"Glad to see you're feeling better, man," Gio says, smile wide and fond, and Nico's not sure how to breathe for a moment, his heart is so big in his chest.

"Marti's all mopey when you're gone and he's so much happier when you're happy," Luca adds.

"Yeah, life's boring without you, Fares," Elia agrees.

"Thanks," Nico says as he sets his backpack down on the chair in the corner, and he's not crying. He's really not. But this- this sense of friendship, of camaraderie, of acceptance- god, it's not something Nico's ever gotten before.

"No problem, man," Gio says.

Leaning against the window, Marti is smiling at Nico, whose eyes are wide with shock. Marti winks at him and Nico just has to cross over to kiss his beautiful face before they start playing with the boys, an action gladly reciprocated by Marti before they join the boys for a game.

-

Marti’s mom enters the house as the Christmas party is wrapping up, as everyone is cleaning up, and for the first seconds that Nico sees her, he recognizes the expression on her face. He recognizes that exhaustion, that depression, that feeling when you are drowning inside your own head.

Then her eyes alight on her son and her face lights up when she sees him, and her ocean goes away. Nico understands that all too well- how could you keep an ocean in your head when Martino Rametta is there to keep you afloat?

“Mamma,” Marti says, stepping out of the kitchen to hug her, and Nico stays at the counter, unsure what the right thing to do is right now, whether Marti wants to introduce him to his mother or not, how big of a deal he wants to make of it.

“You know she’s going to love you,” Gio says from the other side of the kitchen, where he’s currently helping sweep the floor. He hit it off really well with Sofi earlier on this evening, and he’s currently flying on Cloud Nine.

Nico’s heart clenches a bit at that, even as it warms from the compliment. He’s so fucking nervous to meet Maria Rametta, to meet the woman that Marti loves so dearly, the one parent he currently speaks about in such glowing terms. 

(And, of course, the woman who understands Nico like so few do. Who knows exactly what kind of ocean is inside of his head, and who might decide she doesn’t want that kind of ocean by her son.)

But then Marti leads his mother into the kitchen, where Nico is waiting, and there’s the proudest of smiles on Marti’s face when he says, “Mamma, this is Nico, my boyfriend. Nico, my mother.”

Alright, then. Right out with it. Dive straight in the deep end. Nico steps forward and offers a hand. “It’s lovely to meet you, ma’am.”

But Maria Rametta bypasses the hand for a kiss on the cheek. “Lovely to meet you, Nico. My son can’t stop gushing about you.”

Nico’s raft- no longer a raft, nowadays, but a large boat- expands again, gathering extra life vests. “He’s been gushing about me?” He asks, looking at Marti, who’s blushing quite considerably but still smiling.

“Yes, he has,” Maria says. "You know, he's been so much happier since you-"

"Mamma!" Martino protests, interrupting her, but the damage has been done. Nico's chest is warm and his boat is dry and he'd hoped that he'd been as good to Marti as he'd been for him, and now Martino's mom is confirming it, in her own way.

"The boy deserves to know, piccolo," Maria says to Marti, a fond smile on her lips, and even as Marti rolls his eyes Nico smiles in gratitude.

"You make me happier too, Marti," Nico says, leaning in to give him quick peck on the cheek, and Marti beams.

-

Years later, in Antwerp, Nico’s ocean combines with the oceans of five other people. Even and Eliott and Joana and David and Sander, all with their own fuck ups and tragedies swimming inside of their heads, all bring their oceans together and somehow the combined ocean shrinks, just a little, in a shared understanding.

And Marti is still there, helping shrink his ocean, helping hold him up. Marti is there, by his side, still kissing him, still sharing that same group of friends with him, their old friends visiting every so often and their new group of friends expanding to include so many people who understand him and Marti like no one else.

Him and Marti go swimming in a pool in Antwerp and the ocean is near gone, so far away in this instant as to be nonexistent. Nico knows that it will come back, that there is no way to hold off his mental illness forever, but he doesn't care. Not here, not with Marti, who promised him years ago that the two of them would take this minute by minute, together forever.

Forever and ever, amen.

**Author's Note:**

> When I started this series I was planning to focus nearly entirely on Sander and Robbe, but then I watched Italy and, well, here's what became of it. I just couldn't resist. Hope you guys enjoyed!


End file.
